"High voltage" signs next to Verizon cable conduits were a bluff tokeep homeless people away. They did not work. Instead they keptfirefighters from extinguishing a mattress fire. Regional phone andInternet service went out as the cables melted.

"In China, there is not much you have to do to contract a virus on yourPC. Plus, you have a one in five chance that you will get that first viruson your brand new PC right out of the box."[Excerpted, follow link for entire text ... jc]

And I'm reminded of what I read earlier today about the Android remote-wipe being not limited to Samsung phones.

Quote

The problem appears to be the Android dialer itself. Websites are able to link characters with a special prefix in order to pass digits to the dialer in a phone -- the same functionality that allows you to initiate a phone call from a site, for example. However, the dialers in phones also support specialized strings of characters that can do anything from displaying a phone's IMEI code to wiping the device itself. In devices vulnerable to the attack, the dialer treats these special codes the same as any other phone number, allowing a website to initiate a reset without the user authorizing it to do so.

http://tinyurl.com/not-just-samsung

Again, the common theme, of convenience taking precedence over security. And, apparently, the web browser can dial the phone without any user interaction at all? Nah ... that couldn't be risky, could it?

... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could somedayfacilitate a police state. -- Bruce Schneier